The repression in Belarus is targeting academia. Olga Shparaga is one of the co-founders of the European College of Liberal Arts in Minsk (ECLAB), and former lecturer at the European Humanities University (EHU), that was forcibly closed 2004 and moved into exile in Vilnius. In a conversation with Friedrich Cain, she describes how the Belarusian exile Academia, although persecuted even abroad, still works to educate Belarusian students and support teachers inside Belarus as well as in exile through various networks and strategies.
By
Friedrich ´ Cain
April 16, 2025
Russian military personnel driving vehicles without license plates, billboards advertising holidays in Moscow, and Belarusians facing the demand to speak “a normal language” — that of the aggressor country responsible for about 30,000 civilian casualties in Ukraine since 2022. As well as these, one can find many more indicators of the growing presence of the so-called “Russkiy mir” (Russian world) in Belarus, a state in which Putin’s occupation is using less obtrusive tactics.
By
Olga Bubich
September 18, 2024
With skillfully designed propaganda that presents the Soviet past in rosy colors only, little is remembered about the Gulag, repressions, censorship, and poverty. “People feel nostalgia for the taste of Soviet sausage,” a critical acquaintance of mine born in the Belarusian Soviet Republic commented. “But no-one remembers that they ate it only once a month”.
By
Olga Bubich
April 23, 2024
Commemoration in Russia of Navalny, also one person with one life, revealed historical continuity with the pain of the past, but perhaps more importantly established a sense of community with those who suffered before us. When the first flowers appeared in front of previously desolate memorials to victims of political oppression, grief mixed with hope to create an unexpected feeling of togetherness.
By
Josefina Lundblad-Janjić
April 23, 2024
On Monday the 20th and on Tuesday the 21st Minsk was back to its normal life. The life of fear.
The doors that had been opened during the month before had once more, at least for a period, been closed. In an interview the 21th, the independent professor of Political Science, Mr Valery Karbalevich comment the situation.
By
Peter Johnsson
December 29, 2010
Joachim Gauck was 50 years old when he first voted in a free, democratic election in the GDR. A conversation about power and powerlessness, culpability, and reconciliation. The opposite of Communism is individualism, he states.
By
Anders Mellbourn
February 19, 2010
+ Paul Hollander (ed.) Political Violence: Belief, Behavior, and Legitimation. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave MacMillan 2008. 272 pages.
By
Lennart Samuelson
February 17, 2010
+ Lennart Samuelson Tankograd. Den ryska hemmafrontens dolda historia 1917–1953 [Tankograd: The Secret History of the Russian Home Front, 1917–1953]. Stockholm: SNS Publisher 2007. 368 pp., illustrated.
By
Sune Jungar
February 16, 2010
Issue 2025, 1: 
Baltic Worlds covers; the Baltic Sea Region, Eastern Europe, Russia, CentralAsia, Caucasus and the Balkan area.